Facebook. Snapchat. Twitter. Vine. Desktop. Mobile. Everything in between. Ahhhhhhh! Fear not, young content marketing grasshopper. Everyone thinks that all these different communication platforms and social networks are *so* unique and require different native ads / posts / messages for each. They’re not wrong. But, we can make it a bit easier when we think [...]

Fear not, young content marketing grasshopper. Everyone thinks that all these different communication platforms and social networks are *so* unique and require different native ads / posts / messages for each.

They’re not wrong. But, we can make it a bit easier when we think about form. Below, we’ve compiled a common taxonomy for all of them. Take a look at the breakdown and start thinking about the building blocks that will work for you and when best to use them*:

What does it all mean?

For one, the ingredients are all the same. Images and words will get you pretty far and this knowledge should impact your paid and organic strategy. Yes, the native ads might render differently across platform, but you know you’ll probably need a short caption, image and a link for most of them. Spend extra time refining those few key executions, and think smarter around the outputs for your media strategy (this means ideating and iterating around what you’ll actually use!)

Social media seems to be turning into a binary: Big platforms where you can share and do it all vs. more niche content sharing tools and experiences with a tighter focus. The latter group comprises the ones that are thriving off of mobile while Facebook and LinkedIn require separate apps that supersede their mobile-web experiences. People are going to do different things when they are on-the-go vs. in one place, but there’s a platform for every state you could be in.

Thanks technology!

*For some of these, as well, it’s worth noting that you have the option of doing or sharing more, but people’s behaviors have crystallized in a certain way (ie; you could write a longform Instagram post…but why?)

If you’ve logged into Rallyverse today, you’ve noticed a fresh set of tutorials. And, if you’ve been following us for a while, you won’t be in the least bit surprised to discover that those tutorials are full of GIFs. Why GIFs? Our product is meant to be extremely simple to use, but it has a [...]

If you’ve logged into Rallyverse today, you’ve noticed a fresh set of tutorials. And, if you’ve been following us for a while, you won’t be in the least bit surprised to discover that those tutorials are full of GIFs.

Why GIFs? Our product is meant to be extremely simple to use, but it has a lot of surface area. For a user to master a new app or task, they really only need to see a few clicks. So instead of videos where you’re going to need to hit play and put your headphones on and sit patiently while a voiceover explains what you’re seeing, we figured we can save us all some time and effort with a GIF and some text.

We have 8 tutorials available that cover all of the basic Rallyverse apps. We’ll be adding more as we hear feedback from users (and add new features).

If you ever need to find tutorials, they’re listed in your profile menu.

It’s been a big week for email at Rallyverse: in addition to new email formats, we’ve also added the ability to include extra comments on individual posts and show each item’s tags in our social selling emails. For each item in your social selling list, Rallyverse will now display any tags that you’ve applied to [...]

It’s been a big week for email at Rallyverse: in addition to new email formats, we’ve also added the ability to include extra comments on individual posts and show each item’s tags in our social selling emails.

For each item in your social selling list, Rallyverse will now display any tags that you’ve applied to the post via the Editor, and allow you to add additional comments in the social selling list view:

Why include the extra comments or tags on the content you’re sharing?

You may want to map social selling content to marketing themes or personas. You may want to keep the publicly posted text separate from the reasons you’re suggesting a particular post. Or you might want to provide your team with a little more color on the themes you’re looking to address with your selections. Or maybe you just want to include an aside to a friend. Any way you want to play it, we’ve got you covered.

And, if you need a refresher on tags and how they can fit into your content marketing strategy across multiple social channels as well as your social selling program, you can read up here and here.

If you received a Daily Deck or social selling email from Rallyverse in the past couple days, you may have noticed a new email format. (If you haven’t seen them yet, get in touch and we’ll send you a sample.) Yes, we’ve polished the typefaces and the header, but the most dramatic change is how [...]

If you received a Daily Deck or social selling email from Rallyverse in the past couple days, you may have noticed a new email format. (If you haven’t seen them yet, get in touch and we’ll send you a sample.)

Yes, we’ve polished the typefaces and the header, but the most dramatic change is how we’re handling individual content posts that you email via our social selling app and content calendar:

We’ve standardized the size of the preview images for each post (they’re now square and 100 pixels on a side). We’ve done away with the description text for each post, and only include the post copy (that the user has entered) and the post title. We’ve also narrowed the sharing buttons and added a tiny border to set them apart from each other.

While your mileage may vary on some elements of the new emails (the specific typefaces will only render if you have them loaded locally), we’ve made sure to standardize the look across the major mail clients.

If you have suggestions on feedback on the new email formats, we’ve love to hear them; get in touch with us @Rallyverse.

There has been a lot of buzz recently around an article from The Awl titled “The Next Internet is TV.” I won’t spend the majority of this post rehashing it, but here’s the Sparknotes to catch you up: 1) The next internet is TV. 2) Is the next internet TV? 3) “The gaps left by [...]

There has been a lot of buzz recently around an article from The Awl titled “The Next Internet is TV.” I won’t spend the majority of this post rehashing it, but here’s the Sparknotes to catch you up:

1) The next internet is TV.

2) Is the next internet TV?

3) “The gaps left by the websites we stop looking at will be filled with new things, and most people won’t really notice the change until it’s nearly done, because they will have been incredibly not bored…In this scenario, what publications will have done individually is adapt to survive; what they will have helped do together is take the grand weird promises of writing and reporting and film and art on the internet and consolidated them into a set of business interests that most closely resemble the TV industry.”

Now, a #reaction from me.

This article surfaces a host of tensions, but at forefront are the notions of direct content vs. aggregated content that is mediated by someone else. Essentially, reading single things in different places or reading collections of different things, together.

The internet started as a digital mirror of the things in the world. You have a company, you have a website representing that company. You claim your www. in the infinite sprawl that is the web. Accordingly, independent bits of content meant that the user was navigating through many different websites to get a more complete set of information.

Fast-forward twenty years and online content producers get bundled together to form power-sites like Gawker, NYTimes, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post or ESPN. These conglomerates rule massive networks of bloggers, and users begin indexing their consumption heavily through “favorites” or even aggregators of aggregators.

The Awl’s article posits that we’re at another tipping point. In this new world, not every content provider needs a website. The funneling of a broad array of content through fewer channels is the first step in this journey towards “television-ness” and away from “internet-ness.” A few major power-players control it all, and the cost of entry is building a similarly aggregated power-player funded by an existing, large brand.

One example, heavily cited in the article, is Fusion, a new “Millennial” network/internet channel created by Disney. Fusion looks like Buzzfeed meets Vice meets the (confusing) new Bloomberg.com. The design feels over-done; the content feels like something I could have read anywhere else. And, I feel scared, because everything is becoming one aesthetic. Or everything powered by brands, at least.

We have to ask: “What happens when only a few media outlets control content on internet?” The reality is that this has been the case IRL for a long time, but digital is newer territory. One key consideration is scale. We’ve never had a network with so many active participants and the sheer expansion of the internet means nothing stays the same for very long. Moreover, this consolidation faces the great democratization and empowerment that has been facilitated by digital. People are really into “making things” right now, and they are equipped with the right tools. The question is whether they’re comfortable doing it under the umbrella of a larger brand, but there will always be people who strike out alone.

I have to believe that the internet will not become TV and that niche content players will survive. Why? Because they’re focused, they’re exclusive and what they don’t do is equally as important as what they do. It might take more work to find these outposts of original content, but there is a reward at the end of that user journey.

And after all, the discovery of something new and different will forever be a marker of #cool.

Getting you the right content to share — on social media, on your blog, in social selling programs, on your site — is what Rallyverse does. Our algorithms scour the web and your content archives to recommend the right mix of new, engaging and relevant things for you to share with your audiences everywhere your [...]

Getting you the right content to share — on social media, on your blog, in social selling programs, on your site — is what Rallyverse does. Our algorithms scour the web and your content archives to recommend the right mix of new, engaging and relevant things for you to share with your audiences everywhere your brand is. That’s our deal.

With our new Search tools, you’ll be able to find a lot more content from a lot more places a whole lot faster.

Here’s how:

In addition to instantly filtering your recommended content by whatever search term you enter or select from Your Keywords or Trending Topics, we’re now searching our entire content index (2,099,620 documents and counting when I sat down to type this up) for relevant items that match your search. Maybe you want something from a source you don’t usually check out? Maybe you’re looking to share something on a topic you don’t usually discuss? Chances are, we’ve got you covered.

(Worth noting: all 2 million-plus documents in our index are from sources that the team at Rallyverse has personally selected. We don’t rely on anyone else’s search index or taxonomy or curated lists. Nope. We vet and choose every single source ourselves. And then, of course, our team of robots takes over to classify and categorize each content source and fill the content index. There are only so many people that work here.)

This is all very cool.

What’s even cooler is that we’ve also indexed all of our clients’ Owned content assets. What’s that mean? It means that it’s easier than ever to search your brand’s content archives for items that match the topics that matter to you and your community right now — even if that content falls outside your typical lookback windows. Need something from your blog from last February? We can find that. How about a Slideshare from October 2013? We can do that.

The best part about our Search is that it’s easy to use (just start typing at any point and we’ll open the Search box) and very very fast.

How fast? This fast:

That’s a little blurry, right? Let’s look at a closeup just to be sure:

Like we said, search everywhere, fast. Let us know if you’d like to see it for yourself.

Do you know what topics work best for your brand? How about the ones that tend to flop? Do you have the tools required to tell the difference? With the new tagging details in Rallyverse Reports, it’s easy to see how you’re using tags as well as which tags are delivering the most engagement. Here’s [...]

Do you know what topics work best for your brand? How about the ones that tend to flop? Do you have the tools required to tell the difference? With the new tagging details in Rallyverse Reports, it’s easy to see how you’re using tags as well as which tags are delivering the most engagement.

Here’s how:

With Posts By Tag, you can check to see how your actual posting behavior matches your content strategy. Are you focusing on the topics that map to your brand’s content goals? How many times did you post content from your blog? How much video did you share?

With Engagements By Tag, you’re able to determine the performance of each different type of content. Reports is happy to do the math for you and generate Top-5 and Bottom-5 lists that summarize which Tags generate the best (and worst) engagement rates.

(Looks like we need to keep rolling with the Space posts and maybe dial down the Robots a bit. And maybe even do more with our Slideshare posts.)

If this all looks new to you, don’t worry. You can create Tags in Settings and attach them to every post you share. You can also filter your content calendar by Tag to set your content strategy for the coming weeks and months.

Good news: we’ve just released a new set of controls to let you fine-tune your Rallyverse content recommendations. While a limited set of ranking settings were previously available to admin users, all users now have access to a much deeper set of controls. This means that you can decide how you’d like our ranking algorithms [...]

Good news: we’ve just released a new set of controls to let you fine-tune your Rallyverse content recommendations. While a limited set of ranking settings were previously available to admin users, all users now have access to a much deeper set of controls. This means that you can decide how you’d like our ranking algorithms to evaluate and surface content in Rallyverse.

Here’s what’s now on offer:

Scoring Options

How do you want your content to be ranked and recommended? You can choose between content scored on Relevancy, which takes into account how each item matches currently trending topics across social networks, or Keywords, which recommends content based on how well it matches the keywords you’ve entered into Rallyverse. You can also adjust the amount of keyword matches and owned content you’d like to see to further tune your results.

Content Recency

How far back do you want Rallyverse to look when it makes recommendations for you? If you’re publishing just today’s curated content, you might only want the most recent stories. If you’re sending a weekly social selling newsletter, you might want to look at the recent week’s best content. And if you’re digging into your owned content archives, you may want to look at only the past few days — or the entire year.

Content Sources

What sources do you want included in your content recommendations? Just curated sources? Do you want to include Tweets from the users you follow on Twitter? How about highlights from your Twitter lists? You can mix and match here.

Should we really be surprised that Facebook uses human beings in a testing lab to tune and improve the algorithm that determines what shows up in the News Feed? With the scale of Facebook’s product, audience and market cap, it’s easy to assume that they have the horsepower to With over a billion users and [...]

With the scale of Facebook’s product, audience and market cap, it’s easy to assume that they have the horsepower to With over a billion users and tons of engagement, sure there is enough behavioral data for them to perfectly calibrate News Feed results to delight their users.

The Newsfeed doesn’t always get it exactly right. Even with all that data about what you’ve liked in the past, what your friends like, how long it takes you to scroll past different types of content, your News Feed can get repetitive, or even boring.

It turns out Facebook knows a purely data-driven News Feed isn’t perfect either, and now they’re using groups of human beings to augment the News Feed algorithms:

“It comes from the intuition that you can only get so far by looking at online behaviors,” says Cox. “It’s expensive, and it takes time. But what you really want is to sit down with 1.2 billion people, every single one, and ask them to go through and point at ‘I really loved that one.” Why did you really love that one? ‘Well I really liked that one because it’s from a person I went to high school with and I use Facebook to stay in touch with people from high school.’ Why did you hate this one? “I really hated this one because I really hate memes.’”

And, if we’re surprised by that sort of approach from Facebook, we shouldn’t be. Google and Microsoft have certainly used humans to evaluate the quality of search engine results for years. If we’re surprised at all, it’s probably because we assume Big Companies and Big Data have All-Powerful Machines From The Future that should never be wrong. From NPR:

Let’s say you have a human making a tough decision alongside an algorithm – researchers recently asked whether we judge algorithmic mistakes more harshly than we judge human mistakes. Berkeley Dietvorst at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania has just finished a study. He has volunteers judge mistakes made by humans and mistakes made by algorithms, and he finds something very interesting. People failed to use the algorithm after they’d seen the algorithm perform and make mistakes, even though they typically saw the algorithm outperform the human. In our studies, the algorithms outperform people by 25 to 90 percent.

That is, we have higher expectations for algorithms than people, and we’re more likely dismiss an algorithm when we catch it making a mistake.

Essentially, none of us want to believe [SPOILER ALERT if you haven't seen Snowpiercer] that you need a small child to make the perpetual motion machine driving the train in Snowpiercer work, and maybe we’re pretty disappointed in Ed Harris when that hatch is opened. But the train was a pretty impressive piece of engineering, and, well, if it takes a human help to keep it moving, we shouldn’t be too surprised.

Did you hear? Snapchat has a new feature. It’s called Discover. And, everybody’s talking about it. By now, you probably already know that Discover boasts a separate screen (just swipe) featuring a paneled wall of participating media outlets—also known as brands. From ESPN to VICE to Cosmopolitan to National Geographic, there’s something for everyone who reads those selected media outlets [...]

By now, you probably already know that Discover boasts a separate screen (just swipe) featuring a paneled wall of participating media outlets—also known as brands. From ESPN to VICE to Cosmopolitan to National Geographic, there’s something for everyone who reads those selected media outlets (see what I did there?). Every 24 hours, brands…oops I mean media companies…update fresh “editions”—essentially curated video clips—which then lead to fuller pieces of #content. Basically, you get a taste and then can opt in for a longer experience.

“This is not social media,” Snapchat declares in its introductory post for Discover. Except…isn’t it? Regardless of whether or not we can share this content YET, Snapchat is leveraging a mobile device embedded with sharing functionality through its original platform, which is the embodiment of “social media.” Keeping the content in the hands of the curators isn’t wrong, but there’s no way user-generated responses aren’t going to inch their way closer in. In fact, marketers love sharing because it gives them a trackable KPI.

What may be waning is the notion of public sharing. Snapchat has always been about privacy (unless you get hacked! I can say that as an #originaladopter of Snapchat). The problem with Facebook and Twitter is that everyone in your master-network sees you liking that video of a cat falling off a roof. Seamless, user-centric, private sharing could take off, if Snapchat enables it. I see a video on National Geographic that is cool, and I send it to ONE of my Snapchat cohorts. I become a private curator just as much as Snapchat’s content curators are.

Snapchat clearly has world domination on its mind. To be the go-to mobile app for both consuming and sharing is a lofty goal, especially facing competition on both fronts and not having achieved either ambition. I also have to wonder if this just means more work…for everyone. How much of Snapchat’s content will be “exclusive” versus recycled video clips linking to articles easily available through other branded apps or aggregators? Is this just another box for marketers to check? All in all, we’ll have to see what happens. Sometime it feels like these themes of makers vs. sharers, public vs. private and networks vs. friends continue to be re-shuffled but never totally resolved.

Will the next sequences of #breaking Snapchat news be centered on new media brands joining the crew? Who’s next? Who would you really want to be in the Snapchat club?

In case you missed our January Newsletter, it has details on our brand-new platform and website, a deep dive into our new Reports, and a roundup of this month’s social content, including our infographic on curated versus owned content. To sign up for the Rallyverse newsletter, head over here.

In case you missed our January Newsletter, it has details on our brand-new platform and website, a deep dive into our new Reports, and a roundup of this month’s social content, including our infographic on curated versus owned content.

“I’m just here so I don’t get fined.” If you’ve been following Super Bowl week, you may have heard how the Seattle Seahawks notoriously, um, media-shy running back Marshawn Lynch has begrudgingly handled his mandatory media sessions. Specifically, by answering every single question asked of him with the same reply (see above). Note that he [...]

If you’ve been following Super Bowl week, you may have heard how the Seattle Seahawks notoriously, um, media-shy running back Marshawn Lynch has begrudgingly handled his mandatory media sessions. Specifically, by answering every single question asked of him with the same reply (see above). Note that he followed up his initial performance with a second showing and new catchphrase (“You know why I’m here”).

Content is a commodity. Or, rather, #content is a commodity. Yeah, we knew that. #Content is everywhere. Your brand needs #content. Panic! Old news. Sure, you can blame Internet piracy—the fact that just about any piece of information you could be looking for is accessible at the click of a button—and free, at that. Old [...]

Sure, you can blame Internet piracy—the fact that just about any piece of information you could be looking for is accessible at the click of a button—and free, at that. Old business models, at least, are unraveling as a result of these unconstrained user behaviors. But it’s more than that.

We working humans, we who love good content and who also consume lots of #content, who want to fight for good content—and most importantly—we who sellthings are guilty.

#Content no longer has a definition. It’s been so abstracted that it’s equivocated to a check box or many check boxes.

You’re a content producer? Cool, I don’t know what that means. Pretty much all I know is that you are alive.

You made some content? Has anyone seen it? No? It doesn’t really matter does it? Just produce it and slot it in. Fast.

We talk about whitepapers and thought leadership and we know that we’re supposed to have something to say. We talk about the fact that we need to have something to say, but we don’t talk about what that thing is. We use hollow words to mask our lack of research or knowledge of what we are supposed to be talk about.

We design websites and print layouts before we know what fills them up. Meaning no longer dictates the nature of the container. It’s the container that wins. Every single time. It’s easier that way. After all, we gotta keep moving.

There’s something artificial in this need to fill the space, something self-imposed and unnecessary. If we’re not careful, we fill the space without actually saying anything. Without sharing a single coherent piece of information. Without articulating a point of view.

My challenge to us all? Be specific. The difference between quality content and #content isn’t length, price tag, or complexity. It’s clarity. If you’re sending a tweet or writing a whitepaper, don’t just fill space. Share something specific, have something to say.

Okay, this one has been bothering me for a while. Recently, but honestly it seems like forever, there has been an influx of “Millennial”-related content being produced. They’re stupid, they’re smart, they’re different! They hate authority! They value free time! They just want to find themselves! They’re screwed! We’ve read it all. Any ounce of [...]

Okay, this one has been bothering me for a while. Recently, but honestly it seems like forever, there has been an influx of “Millennial”-related content being produced. They’re stupid, they’re smart, they’re different! They hate authority! They value free time! They just want to find themselves! They’re screwed! We’ve read it all.

Any ounce of critical reasoning will tell you that if you are trying to evaluate a “generation” of people that spans over 25 years… (early 1980s to 2000s), you’re not going to get very accurate insights. People younger than me (25) are very different than people exactly my age. Adults five years older than me are equally different. Technology has exploded and “Millennials” orbit different moments in that chronology—some spin much closer to giants like Twitter and Facebook, and others are more fluent with newer platforms like WhatsApp or Keek (I hear tweens use this a lot? It scares me).

The reality is…it’s a much more complex landscape than ever portrayed in the media. Tech development and trends move at such a rapid pace…one year makes an enormous difference. These evolutions are only starting to be documented. I’d argue that—when it comes to social media—this diverse landscape has pulled people closer to the behavioral habits of their immediate peers.

My friends and I marvel at apps we’ve never heard of / think are stupid / are jealous we don’t understand. Similarly, people slightly older than me (one reference point I always use is Year Of Facebook Adoption [YOFA]) exhibit what I find to be hilarious social media habits. You really can only write about these behavioral nuances and micro-trends if you are actually experiencing them firsthand. Luckily (or unluckily), we’re all aging and new, young writers are starting to make their natural courses into media. They bring an important, more accurate, more intimate perspective on social media—one that’s grounded in experience. But this is more than just a stupid label, it’s about user experience, design aesthetics, habit-forming behaviors and the future of technology.

If we want to design and think better about the future of social media, we need to more rigorously acknowledge and articulate the nuances of its primary audience.

This is sixth in series of posts on the new version of Rallyverse. If you’re not yet using the new version yet, just click the link at the top of your Rallydeck. If you have questions, just get in touch. Up today are the new Rallyverse Reports. Tracking your content’s performance is essential to any social media [...]

This is sixth in series of posts on the new version of Rallyverse. If you’re not yet using the new version yet, just click the link at the top of your Rallydeck. If you have questions, just get in touch. Up today are the new Rallyverse Reports.

Tracking your content’s performance is essential to any social media strategy. With our new Reports, we’re offering a new set of insights to help content marketers determine what’s working and what isn’t — and to tweak their strategy accordingly.

New Layout and Design

The new Reports features an entirely new layout, with filters for networks and date ranges along the top, a new set of charts and new post-level details. We tried to tease out the data that’s most actionable to marketers and to lay it out in a way that was easily consumed.

What’s Your Best Day And Time?

When is your audience most engaged on social media? To answer that question, you can’t just count engagements in each day or time slot, you need to know the rate of engagement so you can be sure that you’re not neglecting a day and time where posts outperform your average. We’ve got that.

Detailed Post-Level Data

We’ve tightened up the post-level data view so that you can see more posts on the page at once, and sort by all the available columns with a click. You can also navigate directly to the post via the social network icons. Oh, and we’re now reporting reach from Facebook and LinkedIn so you can see (and sort by) audience size for each post.

This is fifth in series of posts on the new version of Rallyverse. If you’re not yet using the new version yet, just click the link at the top of your Rallydeck. If you have questions, just get in touch. Up today are the new Rallyverse Settings. While you may not visit Settings every day, they’re essential [...]

This is fifth in series of posts on the new version of Rallyverse. If you’re not yet using the new version yet, just click the link at the top of your Rallydeck. If you have questions, just get in touch. Up today are the new Rallyverse Settings.

While you may not visit Settings every day, they’re essential to making to sure that you have the right content and publishing options to execute your content marketing strategy with Rallyverse. With this update, we’ve reorganized the Settings to accommodate the current status of the platform and introduced some steps to give users more control over changes to Settings.

A (Slightly) Different Taxonomy

Rallyverse has grown. To be honest, our old Settings pages were struggling to keep up. So we’ve reorganized around a clearer taxonomy, one that carves out separate spaces for connecting to social network, setting up post tracking and managing your content inputs. We’ve also added some choices (keep an eye on these — lots more coming soon here) for how content is ranked and how we deliver your notifications.

Don’t Forget To Save Your Changes

We used to automatically save any changes you made to your Settings, but that could be a little confusing at times. So we decided to go old school and add an actual “Save Profile” button. Don’t worry, we’ll remind you when you make any change that you need to save.

More Control

We’ve added more controls around how content is ranked and filtered under “Ranking” as well as new tools for managing your notifications and deeper controls for Admin users. Stay tuned for updates as these sections get filled out.

This is fourth in series of posts on the new version of Rallyverse. If you’re not yet using the new version yet, just click the link at the top of your Rallydeck. If you have questions, just get in touch. Up today is the new Rallyverse Creator. A big part of any content strategy is creating [...]

This is fourth in series of posts on the new version of Rallyverse. If you’re not yet using the new version yet, just click the link at the top of your Rallydeck. If you have questions, just get in touch. Up today is the new Rallyverse Creator.

A big part of any content strategy is creating your own content, be it for social media or for your blog or landing pages. With the new Creator in Rallyverse, we’re giving you richer tools to create posts on all the topics that make sense for you. When you click the green Creator icon, we present you with a blank palette — but you can easily build from there.

Search Our Index

If you know what you want to talk about, but don’t have anything handy to share, you can search for content in our real-time index. Our index contains all the sources we’re examining to recommend content. The results are sorted in reverse chronological order so you get the most recent results at the top of your list.

Bring Your Own URL

If you have an article, video or image you’d like to share, you can drop the URL directly into the composer window and Rallyverse will fetch the all the relevant metadata (title, description, image) and help you to build a post.

Trending Topics, Twitter Hashtags, Your All-Stars

Still at a loss for what to post? You can sort content by trending topics, what’s trending on Twitter, your top keywords or even re-post your most popular content from the past seven days with quick access to your All-Star posts.

How do marketers mix their owned, curated and promotional content? We looked at this topic last summer and are now circling back with fresh data from Q4 of 2014, in a handy infographic. You can download the infographic here.

This is the third in a series of posts on the new version of Rallyverse. If you’re not yet using the new version yet, just click the link at the top of your Rallydeck. If you have questions, just get in touch. Up today is the new Navigation. One of the most obvious changes in the [...]

This is the third in a series of posts on the new version of Rallyverse. If you’re not yet using the new version yet, just click the link at the top of your Rallydeck. If you have questions, just get in touch. Up today is the new Navigation.

One of the most obvious changes in the new Rallyverse is the new navigation scheme. We’ve changed the way you access different parts of the Rallyverse platform, and have done so in a way that should be speedier and easier across the board.

Look Up, Not Left

Instead of accessing different applications within Rallyverse via a series of menus and submenus in an always-present left sidebar, we’ve now moved the navigation controls to the top of the page. To switch between the Home Screen, Content Calendar, Social Selling, Content Hub, Reports, Notifications and Settings means clicking on the icons and sliding from one view to the next. All the views are loaded when you arrive at the page, so you shouldn’t see that blue bar again (Huzzah!).

A Warm Welcome

When you first log in each day, you’ll see a welcome screen that offers a summary of what’s waiting for you in Rallyverse, along with links to each of the different Rallyverse Apps (Content Calendar, Social Selling, Content Hubs, et al).

Switch Profiles

To navigate between your different Rallyverse profiles, click on your profile pic icon to reveal a submenu. Clicking your name will reveal a search box where you can enter other profile names and switch to them.

This is the second in a series of posts on the new version of Rallyverse. If you’re not yet using the new version yet, just click the link at the top of your Rallydeck. If you have questions, just get in touch. Up today is the new Rallyverse Editor. The most obvious change in the Rallyverse [...]

This is the second in a series of posts on the new version of Rallyverse. If you’re not yet using the new version yet, just click the link at the top of your Rallydeck. If you have questions, just get in touch. Up today is the new Rallyverse Editor.

The most obvious change in the Rallyverse Editor is its size. Instead of a small window sitting atop your content results, the Editor now takes up your entire browser window, and leaves you a bunch more room to maneuver. What are we doing with all that space?

Information In Context

We’ve split the Editor into two parts. The left part of the screen is where you edit, save and schedule your posts, along with where you can add Tags and Targeting and include them in your Social Selling Lists or Content Hubs. And when you take those actions on a post, the right side of the screen will display information that makes you more productive. Scheduling something? Your content calendar appears. Changing an image? No problem. Emailing something? We’ll pop up an address bar for you.

Paper Trails

When you’re working with a team on content marketing, it’s helpful to know which team member took which actions on a post. That’s why we now include summary information on the last action taken on every post — who took an action, what action they took, and when they took the action. Curious to see who scheduled that post for Monday at 3 pm? We’ve got you covered, right in the Editor.

Post Previews

Want to see what your post will look like on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn before it goes out? Click the preview buttons to see a sneak preview of your post as we expect it to appear on each of the networks, including appropriate image sizing.

If you had to do a day’s worth of social media in 30 minutes, what would you do*? This is, in fact, not a ridiculous proposition. For many entrepreneurs-on-the-side, 30 minutes a day is a generous but essential amount of time to devote to social. Let’s presume you have access to some kind of publishing [...]

If you had to do a day’s worth of social media in 30 minutes, what would you do*?

This is, in fact, not a ridiculous proposition. For many entrepreneurs-on-the-side, 30 minutes a day is a generous but essential amount of time to devote to social.

Let’s presume you have access to some kind of publishing software that allows you to program posts outside of your 30-minute window. These 30-minutes, then, are for planning and executing for any number of occasions in the next 24 hours.

Here’s what I would do:

1. Cheat. Kind of. You can caveat this rule by remaining alert and engaged the rest of your 23.5 hours. This means scanning through the news with an eye for reposting or actually thinking about any content that might be relevant to your brand throughout the day. Absorb your role enough that your brain is attuned to at least recognizing when something might be relevant for future social activity.

2.This one’s more tactical. Immediately scan and repost tweets or comments from users who have engaged with you in the past 24-hours—provided their posts are positive towards your brand. Amplifying evangelists will reward your brand and make them feel great about engaging in the first place. I cannot emphasize the benefits to doing this enough.

3.Think quickly back: Did something somewhat relevant to your brand/industry and featured prominently in the news happen in the last 24-hours? Most likely, not really. Breathe a sigh of relief. But if something did happen—and I’m talking something major—then you must address it in some way. Tweet. Repost. Anything, at a minimum, because you’ve got to be there ASAP.

4.Similarly, think with more focus around your brand. Google it “and news” and just double check that there isn’t a crisis you are neglecting. Remember that all social outlets immediately become crisis management channels if there is a situation that warrants it. People will come looking for a response and no response can be the worst response.

5.Take the rest of your time to digest and engage – thoughtfully. Quality over quantity should be your guiding principle. This may seem counterintuitive since YOU ONLY HAVE THIRTY MINUTES. But that’s actually enough time to write a couple of strong one-liners and repost some things you agree with. It’s also enough time to take a selfie or create your own image and disseminate it like crazy (if you made it, get it out there). This leads me to my final piece of advice.

6. YOU CAN MAKE AND WRITE SOMETHING OF YOUR OWN IN THIRTY MINUTES. SO DO IT.

Good luck!!!!

*Quick reminder that this all becomes a lot easier if you have the support of a content marketing platform that recommends content and helps you create social posts on the topics that matter most to you. You know, like Rallyverse.

This is the first in a series of posts on the new version of Rallyverse. If you’re not yet using the new version yet, just click the link at the top of your Rallydeck. If you have questions, just get in touch. Getting things done with Rallyverse starts with the Home Screen, formerly known as [...]

This is the first in a series of posts on the new version of Rallyverse. If you’re not yet using the new version yet, just click the link at the top of your Rallydeck. If you have questions, just get in touch.

Getting things done with Rallyverse starts with the Home Screen, formerly known as Rallydeck. The Home Screen displays all of your new content recommendations and draft posts for searching, filtering and editing. While the new Rallyverse Home Screen retains the basic tile layout of the Rallydeck complete with post details like the source, publication date and score, there are some cool new elements worth noting.

New Sidebar

The first big change is that the sidebar, complete with the search box and filters, is no longer displayed by default. Instead, the Home Screen shows you nothing but your content recommendations.

To show the search box and filters, click the blue hamburger button in the upper left corner of the screen (far left of the top nav bar). That displays the new sidebar:

The new sidebar has four different sets of controls: a Sort toggle, a Search box, a set of pre-set Filters and Your Keywords for sorting content:

Sort allows you to choose to sort the content recommendations by their score or by time, with the most recently published content showing first at the top of the page. The default sort style is by Score.

Search allows you to enter and query and display only the results that contain their query terms: either in the post title, the post source or in any of the user-defined or publisher-defined description text.

Filters allow you to sort the results of the Home Screen by a number of different categories, including New posts, Draft posts, Owned content, as well as content from Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

Your Keywords allow you to sort content by their most highly scored Keywords (that they entered in Settings).

Breadcrumbs

When you enter a search query, selects a Filter or Keyword, the Home Screen will display a breadcrumb trail at the top of the results that lets you know what results have been displayed — and allows you to easily return to a previous view.